Marlow Stern at The Daily Beast reports the “acclaimed rapper” Kanye West displayed a dramatically egotistical insensitivity to the disabled in demanding an entire audience in Sydney, Australia to stand up and honor his musical/rhyming genius. Will the media catch on and force him to stop this harassment from the stage?
Audience members had to display a prosthetic limb, and after much ruckus, a wheelchair, to prove they weren’t showing disrespect to the rapper whose last album was titled “Yeezus.”
West reportedly announced, “I can’t do this song. I can’t do this show until everybody stand up… Unless you got a handicap pass and you get special parking and s--t. ‘Imma see you if you ain’t standing up, believe me, I’m very good at that.” Then came the foot-in-mouth moment. Most of the fans got up and boogied, but soon West spotted a pair of concertgoers who’d remained in their seats, and refused to continue the show until they stood up and danced like the rest. One of those two singled-out fans raised a prosthetic limb, thereby proving that she did in fact “get special parking and s--t,” to which West replied, “Okay, you fine.”
West then homed in on Fan No. 2, who was still seated. He stopped performing the tune “The Good Life” and declared, “This is the longest I’ve had to wait to do a song, it’s unbelievable.” The crowd was reportedly trying to clue Kanye in to his epic blunder, with the entire section making wheelchair signals with their arms. But to no avail. West sent his bulky bodyguard Pascal Duvier into the crowd to confirm that the seated fan was, in fact, in a wheelchair. When it was confirmed, West said, “He is in a wheelchair? It’s fine!”
At least when Joe Biden told a disabled man to "stand up, Chuck," he had no idea the man was disabled. West drew some predictable tweets, such as:
i know Kanye west likes to think he's Jesus, but telling a wheelchair bound kid to stand up and dance won't help him
— sarcastic?me? (@kimmie244) September 13, 2014
The London Daily Mail added that this is routine behavior. West drew critics at his Melbourne show at Rod Laver Arena earlier in the week, when midway through his song Good Life he went on one of his famous rants, demanding to know why the audience wasn't on their feet.
"I can't go on with this song if there's people in here sitting down unless y'all sitting down because y'all handicapped," he said. "Unless y'all have handicapped parking?"
